By Benjamin Capps

Associate Professor in Clinical Ethics at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada | Member of Humanimal Trust Science Committee 

I am an academic philosopher – a bioethicist.  I once worked in molecular genetics and also had a law school education.  My professional career started at Bristol University Medical School, and, via seven years at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine in Singapore, I ended up in my current whereabouts, on the eastern side of Canada. 

Here, at Dalhousie University’s medical school, I was head of a pre-clerkship course in Professional Competencies that integrates the social aspects of medicine with clinical skills.  I am the chair of the Human Genome Organisation’s Committee on Ethics, Law and Society, of which more anon.  I am a member of Humanimal Trust’s Science Committee. 

How do I situate all this with Humanimal Trust’s mission?  It may be considered as two parts: a practical goal to advance collaboration between human and veterinary medicine; and a normative condition that, as such, these partnerships achieve equal benefit for both human (being)s and (non-human) animals. 

For Humanimal Trust, these go hand-in-hand as ‘One Medicine’, but some collaborations will not meet the latter ethical requirement.  To understand why, I can turn to how scholarly ideas are formed. Some of these are often baked into the academy; for others, it is easy to jump between philosophical meanings. 

The challenge of collaboration 

Speaking from my time at various medical schools, there is still an overall perception that planetary health matters only to Earth’s human inhabitants.  On the one hand, it makes sense to focus on public and global health because these essentially ground the social aspects of medicine.  But one might also be critical that the curriculum reinforces the ‘great divide’ between culture and nature.  That division is part of the story of two broad worldviews, as Margaret Atwood described, between the ‘cold, hard, numerical real world’ of science, and the ‘flossy’ world of philosophy.[1] 

But it is important to understand the deeper reflection Atwood narrates across the ‘MaddAddam trilogy’ – Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam.  The dystopian world she imagined (no spoilers) is not just a literary expression of scientific hubris, but one of forsaking ‘nature’ – a fuzzy word, here given to a sense of doom. 

Factually, environmental harm was first realized during the ecological turn in the 60’s; and then environmentalism was redefined in the ‘Science Wars’ of the 1980s as a social construct.  Today, philosophical environmentalism might be recognised as a bedfellow to science – not only a ‘nature crisis’ supported in ‘hard’ data in evolutionary-ecological terms,[2] but though bioethical reasoning that nature is essential to human health and wellbeing.[3] 

But there has always been a sense in which nature is scientifically and philosophically understandable; after all, the Earth has always been our life support, and we can’t live anywhere else (yet!). 

So, the dyad need not be used pejoratively, but as a long-standing expression of respect for nature; an understanding, as Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It, that one “finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing.”  According to the nature writer Paul J. Willis, Shakespeare’s interpretation of the ‘book of nature’ is a Renaissance analogy of how each of us shows respect: whereas some talk about the good of nature, others learn from it; some bring evil to ‘the forest,’ and the forest gives as much back.[4] 

The “key Enlightenment concept was Nature” declares the historian Roy Porter, Nature enshrined both norms and ideals: it was a “nest of paradoxes.”[5]  Nature’s value was never far away for some – Charles Darwin called bees ‘good botanists’.[6] Today, one might also find nature – for good reason perhaps, given what the world went through with COVID-19 – unsettling in harboring unknown pathogens; but then, some think there is a technological opportunity to ‘sculpt evolution’ to overcome “nature [that] has no moral compass.”[7]  Read Atwood’s books to find out how that likely goes. 

This is where a related concept of One Health comes in: human health – particularly through the lens of repeating catastrophic pandemics – cannot be seen in isolation from the health of animals; or, to put another way, pandemics don’t start with animals but because of how humans treat them.  (Who can forget the sight of mink – only some infected by COVID-19 – emerging from mass graves in Denmark, which in part toppled the government at the time.) 

A One Health strategy doesn’t start with technologies to detect the next pathogen (because by then it might be too late), or rest with public health responses as it surges through the population, but with better treatment of animals even in the absence of zoonotic disease; that is, considering ecological determinants of health as ‘one’ with ours means that animals are less likely to ‘spillover’[8] the next pandemic.  

One Health suggests animal welfare is equal to that of human wellbeing.[9]  But One Health can be directly traced to the origins of One Medicine.  The origins of One Medicine are in the forensic progress in the Nineteenth Century across newly minted scientific fields. The One Medicine practitioners of the time suggested that human medicine is not achievable in and of itself, but only in collaboration with a nascent veterinary profession; this partnership was reinvigorated in Calivin Schwab’s Veterinary Medicine and Human Health.[10] 

The grounding of knowledge practices based in nature are largely forgotten in teaching professional competencies in today’s medical schools – social determinants of health are matters for public health, which leaves little space for meaningful collaboration in other environmental or ecological determinants. 

But the One Medicine idea suggests that just as there is no history of medicine without visualizing the animals that have always been in our communities,[11] it is foolhardy to pursue social health in isolation from nature.  Through the work of Humanimal Trust, the fact that there is ‘but One Medicine’ provides opportunities for collaborative research that truly does benefit both humans and animals; that is, research that advances human and animal healthcare but not at the expense of an animal’s life.  Through its funding opportunities, it is at the forefront of breaking down disciplinary barriers. 

Observations on a philosophical way forward 

In 2024, I organized a workshop funded by the Brocher Foundation in Geneva.[12]  The gathering was meant to be an opportunity to widen the human-centeredness of HUGO, towards including the environmental genetic factors implicated by the nature crisis in climate change and biodiversity loss. 

HUGO was founded in anticipation of the need for a forum for international coordination of the Human Genome Project.  The declaration of the completion of the human reference genome in 2001 sparked the ‘Genomic Era’ in which genetic sequencing would be regularly used in clinical diagnostics and treatments. In ecological sciences, genomics is used to track global biodiversity loss, and to restore the integrity of ecosystems, monitor anthropogenic environmental change, and develop models for understanding ecosystem interactions. 

In Geneva, we debated opportunities for collaboration between human genomic scientists and the ecological and veterinary sciences. We reckoned, however, that it would be easier if we knew what common values were shared between us; and if they could be spelled out, it would allow disciplines (in the words of the evolutionary biologist, Steven J. Gould) to ‘jump together’. 

In my opinion, One Medicine reflects such commonality.  This is not a controversial stance: contemporary biology acknowledges the fact that all life has evolved and that grounds shared, rather than exceptional, experiences between humans and animals.  And yet the case that all life should be studied cooperatively seems to have to be made over again. 

So, does it matter whether we’re talking about One Health or One Medicine?  In my own work, I have made the case that One Health matters because it is not public health: the values can be different but pursued coextensively.  And yet much of current practice under One Health still has anthropocentric framing; practically, it means that opportunities and funding are allocated to the new idea of One Health only reinforce already established frameworks.  And, in my opinion, One Medicine has yet to have a modern renaissance like One Health, despite its ancient roots in the domestication of animals and relevance to modern multispecies communities, animal health is still the pursuit of ‘the other’ medicine. 

Closing remarks 

I’ve only been able to touch upon the philosophy underlying my work.  But I can close with some practical observations.  Firstly, as any philosopher worth their salt will tell you, definitions matter. 

In Canada, there is very little recognition of One Medicine, despite the ‘Father of Modern Medicine’ – a Canadian, William Osler (1849-1919) – being connected to its early practice. This is where such conceptual problems become important.  The origins of One Medicine lie with the American physician Benjamin Rush (1746–1813) whose simple claim that there is but one medicine, also signified sympathy with the plight of particularly working animals connected to us. Osler, on the other hand, was pro-vivisection. 

And another pioneer of One Medicine – the veterinary epidemiologist Calvin Schwab (1927-2006) – claimed, “‘All creatures great and small’ includes above all our own species.”  Concepts evolve – and it is important to capture what One Medicine means now: One Medicine is not One Health.  And that has a practical ramification: concepts are expressed in policy.  Most clearly, a definition determines where money is spent; but it also reflects what is in curricula, or even what is talked about, and, ultimately, that serves how we see health, nature, and the environment. 

And in case you think this is all ‘academic,’ I can point to a real debate that is playing out this side of the pond (evident in much of the press coverage here) in respect to the UK’s ban on boiling lobsters (Nephropidae) while they are alive. 

The concern is that this ban specifically will cost businesses if introduced here (likewise, the ban faced resistance from the UK’s shellfish industry, in light of enforcement also being difficult). 

As part of the Labour government’s strategy to improve animal welfare,[13] the ban had cross party support and built on the animal welfare law introduced by the Conservatives in 2022 (and there are similar bans in Switzerland, Norway and New Zealand).  Canada provides over half of the world’s supply of lobsters and is worth many billions of dollars.  And, while the concerns are not framed that it is a ban on killing lobsters for food, there are still experts willing to question whether lobsters are ‘sentient’ – that is, can ‘feel pain’ or more precisely, sense in the same way to human beings – and I can only fathom that is a result of straining utilitarian thinking enough to justify narrowing the definition to exclude (only some animals as) Cartesian automata. 

Of course, the utilitarian Peter Singer famously argued in Animal Liberation (1975) that all sentient animals matter because they suffer (and at one time thought it was unlikely that oysters – Pteriomorphia – feel pain).[14] But the debate again is about whether it is worth recognising animal suffering to the degree that it warrants a ban on causing such suffering, and, as such, a single practice – boiling them alive – risks undermining economies (even though the UK strategy does not ban lobster farming). 

Reforming the Canadian lobster industry towards consumer change, therefore, is unlikely to happen even through willful collaboration.  There is, I think, too much practical distance.  And these justify ‘traditions’ parallel to the ‘factual case,’ for example, that invasive animal research is necessary regardless of evidence otherwise of its lack of modern benefits.[15] 

If such cooking techniques are unnecessary, then are there relatively easy changes society can make to be less cruel to animals?  But often that distance, philosophically speaking, is vast – in animal law, for example, a New York court concluded that granting rights to an elephant (Elephantidae) captive in Brox Zoo risked “enormous destabilizing impacts” and “perilous implications” for the agricultural industry and medical research efforts.[16] 

In light of the tenuous logical grounds connecting these interests to the plight of Happy, to make a decision about their freedom and personhood, it is time for One Medicine; but only if we ‘jump together.’ A One Medicine curriculum, for instance, might reinforce the fact that human beings are ‘animals,’ too, and thus medical and environmental understanding etiologies by way of the connections between species is worth studying collaboratively. Some of these students could go on to be leaders in One Health and One Medicine.  Or a move to observational and clinical-based research can flourish in human and veterinary medicine without harming animals. 

And it ought to go without saying that the weight of evidence requires acknowledging animals suffer at our hands.  One Medicine could be a reflective point to ban cruel practices towards animals, just as the Theory of Evolution changed our relationship with animals, or the modern discovery of the sense of wellbeing, and even imagination, we share with animals.[17] 

Author Bio 

Ben is an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioethics, Faculty of Medicine, at Dalhousie University.  His work investigates issues relating to the nexus between applied ethics, normative theory, and jurisprudence. His overall aim is to impart substantive ethical grounding and critique that has professional and wider social impact.  The opinions expressed in this article are his own and do not represent those of Humanimal Trust, Dalhousie University or any other organisation mentioned. 

References

[1] Atwood, M. 2003. Oryx and Crake. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Ltd. p. 188.

[2] Abbasi, K., Ali, A., Barbour, V. et al. 2023. Time to Treat the Climate and Nature Crisis as One Indivisible Global Health Emergency. British Medical Journal 2023;383:p2355.

[3] Capps, B. 2024. One Health Environmentalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[4] Willis, P. 1988. ‘Tongues in Trees’: The Book of Nature in ‘As You like It’. Modern Language Studies 18: 65-74.

[5] Porter, R. 2000. The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment. London: W.W. Norton & Company.

[6] Darwin, C. 1878. Cross and Self-Fertilization of Plants (second edition). London: John Murry. p. 419.

[7] See Kevin Esvelt’s homepage: http://www.sculptingevolution.org/. Esvelt is well-known in the development of ‘ethical’ gene drives; see, Capps, B. 2019. Gene Drive Gone Wild: Exploring Deliberative Possibilities by Developing One Health Ethics. Law, Innovation and Technology 11: 231-256.

[8] See, David Quammen’s book, Spillover: Animal Infections and The Next Human Pandemic (2013); https://davidquammen.com/spillover/.

[9] Capps, B. 2022. One Health Ethics. Bioethics 36: 348-355.

[10] First published in 1964, it was only in the 1984 third edition that One Medicine was used to frame the veterinary profession as public health: Schwabe, C. 1984. Veterinary Medicine and Human Health. Third Edition. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins.

[11] Porter, R. 1993. Man, Animals and Medicine at the Time of the Founding of the Royal Veterinary College. In Mitchell, A. ed. The Advancement of Veterinary Science: The Bicentenary Symposium Series: History of the Healing Professions: Parallels Between Veterinary and Medical History, 4 vols. Vol. 3, 19–30. Wallingford: CAB International.

[12] For the technical report, see, Capps, B., et al. 2025. The Ecological Genome Project and the Promises of Ecogenomics for Society: Realising a Shared Vision as One Health. Bioethics 39: 788-795.

[13] Animal Welfare Strategy for England. Hansard; Volume 779: debated on Wednesday 21 January 2026. https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2026-01-21/debates/EC63BF37-555F-4ADB-94BD-266E8208D610/AnimalWelfareStrategyForEngland

[14] We’ll put to one side the philosophical question of how sentience relates to concepts such as consciousness.

[15] Capps, B. 2017. Do Chimeras Have Minds? The Ethics of Clinical Research on a Human-Animal Brain Model. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 26: 577-591.

[16] Capps, B. 2023. What do Chimeras Think About? Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 32: 496-514.

[17] Bastos, A. and Krupenye, C. 2026. Evidence for Representation of Pretend Objects by Kanzi, a Language-Trained Bonobo. Science 391: 583-586.

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